LOS ANGELES — In the miniseries Houdini, Adrien Brody — wrapped in chains and canvas straitjackets — dives deep into the stormy waters of the public crusades and personal life of illusionist and escape artist Harry Houdini.

The two-part series, premiering tonight on History, charts one of the first international superstars from America in an existential drama about death, spirituality and the charlatans who prey on fears.

Brody, 41, recently addressed how Houdini influenced his acting career, discussed the illusionist’s deep rationalism during the early-20th-century spiritualism movement and pondered how a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant helped define the modern American dream.

Q: What drew you to the Houdini story?

A: I was infatuated with magic at a very young age. I started learning magic and dreaming of becoming a magician as early as 6 years old, and Houdini was a big inspiration.

Acting followed this introduction to performance. I see parallels and how it was a steppingstone to understanding how to make something your own, making a role your own, making a scenario and connecting with it. It all stems from developing and creating this illusion, which I learned at a very young age.

Q: Did the role change how you look back at yourself as a child?

A: It has more made me re-evaluate myself as a man — mainly because I witnessed what this man endured on a smaller level, with the risk involved, his determination, the discomfort he must have experienced, the pressure of all his routines and his unrelenting drive to overcome these obstacles.

Q: What did you learn in particular?

A: What I didn’t know as a young man and as a child about Houdini was that he had many failures along the way and disappointments. He ultimately differentiated himself from other magicians of his time by becoming an escape artist.

Q: What about the spiritual tension within him?

A: We all have different forces pulling us in different directions, and deeply he wished to believe in the supernatural.

Q: Didn’t he campaign against the spiritualism movement of the 1920s?

A: I feel that set him off course. He was successful in combating it, but I look at it like it was an ongoing legal battle he was fervently right about and would prevail, but the toll was too great on himself and, to some extent, to his career and creativity.

Q: What do you find enduring about the Houdini story?

A: He represents that you can overcome and surmount most obstacles if you put your mind and heart to it, and most people don’t have the will and the endurance that Houdini possessed.

It’s a mental thing at the end of the day. If you feel that you cannot endure something, you won’t endure it.